With deep regret we wish to let visitors to this web site know that our colleague Rafe Sagarin has died and while we are keeping the web site in his memory it is no longer being updated. If you have any questions please contact : ienv-environment@email.arizona.edu

Publications

We are eager to bring the ideas behind the Adaptable Solutions Consortium to a wide audience. Accordingly, our publications will span the range from newspaper and magazine articles, to online forums, peer reviewed papers in specialist and general science journals, and book length treatments. Below is a sampling of the publications we have produced on applying adaptable systems thinking to pressing societal concerns

(Basic Books, 2012) is Dr. Rafe Sagarin’s treatment of the surprising and counter-intuitive lessons from nature that can help anyone or any organization become more adaptable in how they deal with risk.

“Learning from the Octopus is a paean to biomimicry and a handbook on “natural security” from an unlikely, but enlightening, source.” —The Scientist

(University of California Press, 2008) is an edited volume with contributions from psychologists, evolutionary biologists, national security experts, virologists, and counter-terrorism experts, that outline the many ways in which lessons from nature can help us understand and respond to a wide range of threats in our world.

"A fascinating read, and an essential and novel perspective on international security. Sagarin and his collaborators are not afraid to think outside the box, effectively making the case that we need to think about these problems in new ways."—Simon Levin, Princeton University

Rafe has a blog post on the Harvard Business Review. This article raises a key fault with even the best innovators--we can never predict the future (case in point: even the great Steve Jobs was way off on his prediction that the Segway would be "bigger than the PC"). Organisms in nature don't even try to make predictions--they just adapt. Here's how.

Rafe's new article on Adaptability in a special issue of Live Better magazine devoted to a "Systems View of Life". Live Better is produced by the Center for a Better Life™, which is "focused on bettering the human condition, within a real-world scenario, using a sustainable business model." That mission statement pretty much sums up natural adaptable systems--they have to be real-world (there's no other one to go to) and they have to have a sustainable "business model". Here is a link to the article.